The streets west of the stadium are laid out in a neat grid of straight lines. Each of them is labeled with a name or number. I try to commit some of the names to memory. I’ve walked these streets before, but it feels like another life. If there are signs on the streets, that might help me find my way if I have to run that way instead of taking the river. North, then east, then south, I say to myself. Stay close to the buildings. Keep low. Backup plan. I can make it.
I leave the map and continue going around the stadium, keeping the exterior wall to my left. Entrance A appears in front of me. I am seconds away from pushing through the door when something blocks out the gray daylight. I stand there, paralyzed for a second. How did they know? The bottom of a transport begins to descend into the forecourt outside the entrance. I don’t take another instant to think. I turn and run up the stairs.
Tripping over bodies and other debris, I launch myself upward three steps at a time, legs burning with effort. At the top of the stairs I push through another door and am greeted by a wall of darkness. Behind me I hear an explosion. The transport has just blown out the entrance doors. This is clearly not about stealth for them anymore.
I let the door close behind me, and the last of the light disappears. I take a tentative step forward, then another. After five steps I reach a step down, then another. I tuck the pistol under my arm and dig out one of the boxes of matches from my thigh pocket. In my state of mind I can barely fish a match out of the box, much less feel my way to lighting it. Finally, by touch, I feel the hard end of the match and rough striking surface. I try and fail to light five matches before finally one bursts to life.
The tiny flame envelops me in a small circle of light. I can’t see beyond about five feet in front of my face. There are remains in rows of seats to either side of me. I lean down to look more closely at one. They all have the telltale black spiderweb of veins, but there is no sign of a dart, and I wonder how these people were killed. Perhaps it was some kind of gas. There seem to be a lot of them.
The match burns down, singeing my fingers. I drop it. Behind me I hear footsteps coming up the stairs. Without really thinking, I slither along the row past a body and sit down in the first vacant seat I feel. Then I pull up the hood of my jacket and slump forward in the seat. Feeling the remains in the seat next to me, I pull them down on top of me, so the clothed corpse hangs over me like a protective blanket.
Above me, the doors burst open. Through cracked eyes I see the stadium fill with light from a spotlight. Four Nahx begin walking down the stairs. I hold my breath again. I can see the light arcing around the stadium. I can’t believe how large it is, and the hundreds, no thousands, of dead in here. How did they do this?
The heavy Nahx footsteps pound down the concrete stairs, past me and down. From where I rest my head, motionless, I can just see them at the bottom of the long stairway, above the slushy hockey rink. I turn my head to check behind me, slowly and carefully, trying not to let the unfortunate person on top of me slip and clatter to the floor.
There’s a Nahx, standing at the end of the row, looking right at me. I freeze. He doesn’t move, but continues to stare in my direction. His colleagues below are making some banging noises, and from the corner of my eye I can see their light swinging around in the stadium. I hold my breath, willing the Nahx at the end of the row to move on. But he doesn’t.
For a wild, optimistic moment I think that maybe this is the one who spared me in the trailer. Maybe he’ll spare me again. I hold on to this delusion until he simultaneously raises a flashlight, bathing me in bright light, and his rifle beside it.
I crash to the floor as two darts thunk into the corpse above me. The whine of the rifle recharging is all I can hear as I scramble along the row, slithering like a snake. A dart slams into the back of a seat inches from my head. I pull another dead bundle over me and lunge for the stairs, rolling down them and slamming into the barrier at the bottom. I don’t even look where I’m going. As another dart whistles past my ear, I leap over the barrier into the darkness below.
I land badly on my side, my face cracking into the icy concrete floor. Muscles and bones lanced with pain, I yank my pistol from my jacket and fire indiscriminately into the light above me. After four shots I hear a loud ding, and a dart rifle sails down out of the light to land a few feet away. I swing my leg up and kick it, and it goes spiraling into the dark passageway. Then the light itself falls toward me, with the Nahx holding it. He lands above me and effortlessly swipes the gun from my hand. It goes clanking into the darkness.
I scramble for my knife, but the Nahx moves quickly, lunging down and wrenching my arm out. I feel a blaze of pain in my shoulder. With my free hand I grab at his throat, feeling for the weak area under his chin. His grip loosens for a second, and that’s all I need. I swing my legs up and wrap them around his neck, contorting and clenching my abdominal muscles until I manage to flip him off me. His head slams down onto the concrete with a satisfying crack.
Momentarily free, I use my good arm to drag myself away, down into the deep darkness of the passageway. I have no idea what is at the other end, but if I stay at this end, all I will find is death. The pain in my shoulder is strangely empowering, like a hook under my collarbone tugging me away. I look back into the dimly lit stadium and see the Nahx moving again. He turns toward me and without even standing up lunges at least ten feet along the floor to jam a knife into my ankle.
Screaming, I kick out with my other leg, connecting my boot with his armored face. It sends a jarring pain up my leg, but barely seems to touch him. As he yanks the knife out, I kick with that leg and the knife goes sailing away too. He grabs my calf and pulls me along the concrete. Shoulder clenching, I try to raise my own knife, but his fist cracks my forearm away. Beyond all chance I manage to hold on to the knife, but now my arm is numb and useless.
Suddenly, the lights of the other Nahx in the stadium are focused on me, bathing me and my attacker in light. He has one of my arms clenched in his fist. My other arm lies uselessly at my side. I can feel blood pooling around my feet. With his knees the Nahx pins my body and legs to the floor. I shout obscenities at him and writhe like a trapped cat, but it makes no difference. As he looms above me, I can hear the buzzing of his breath, or whatever it is. Behind him, in the light, I see the other Nahx approaching, sloshing through puddles of dirty water, their rifles raised. Now I really am dead. It’s over.
Then, somewhere in the stadium, there is the distinctive sound of a gunshot. A human gun. One of ours. I hear a voice shouting. Shouting my name.